Looking back at 2017

Thu Jan 11 2018 07:53:23 GMT+0000 (Greenwich Mean Time)

Another year, another late-ish post looking at the previous year!

But this time I have a very good excuse, as we were away for three weeks on our honeymoon trip (!). So let's inevitably start with the big personal highlight of the year: we got married! My last year's wonderful partner is now my wonderful spouse. TA-DA! 🎺

Other personal achievements:

Cycled 228 trips, for a total of 1170 km over 73 hours, all in London (for a sense of scale, Barcelona is 1137 km away)

I ran way less: ~150km versus the ~400km of 2015, but...

... I have a personal trainer now! This 1:1 supervision has helped me in various ways:

I am also weight training now, so my strength is not all just on my legs (as when I was just running/cycling). I was also curious about this for a long time, and I'm very excited about getting stronger!

I also started doing yoga, which has been very fulfilling--not only in the immediate sense of being grounded and calm after a session; but witnessing the progression from "kinda OK" to "not only can I do these complicated bindings but even hold myself in the air for a while, wow" has proved me that practice pays off. Next goal: headstands!

I taught myself to swim, front crawl style. Again, it took me many failed attempts but eventually something "just clicked", and I DID IT! Before, I was terrified about getting my nose under water, thanks to some horrible swimming 'lessons' that traumatised me when I was 10. It's never too late! All it takes is some determination, a quiet, shallow pool in which to fail as many times as you need, and lots of patience with yourself.

I kept meditating. This was incredibly useful, specially in various tense situations last year.

Kept my focus on DevTools, by rejecting all invitations to speak at conferences--this takes a disproportionate amount of time if you want to do it well! (And I want to do things well)

Was hiring manager for two positions, and involved in hiring for other positions - my interviewing/hiring skills went up by ten or twenty notches!

I've finally had the time to start learning React and Redux. I'm still a beginner though, but I can see why people can be so excited about it... and why things can go wrong so fast too! I'm using them to write a tool to manage and query lots of data, client side, so it's an interesting problem

Things I did for the first time:

Visited: Cambridge, Cornwall, Antwerp, Philippines

Successfully baked muffins, also my own granola and protein-y bars!

Learnt to cook yummy Indian food. An immense amount of dhals have been cooked and consumed this year.

Played gamelan instruments (during a workshop at the Southbank Centre)